St Paul Sermon Series Week 2: Joy's sermon on Paul, Mocked and Imprisoned '1 Corinthians 1.18-25 Proclaiming Christ Crucified'

Sunday 17th June Sermon Series Part 2

1 Corinthians 1: 18 - 25

Christ the Power and Wisdom of God

¹⁸ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written,

‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
    and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

²⁰ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²² For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³ but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Some background context to the city of Corinth and Paul’s relationship with the community there:

Introduction to the city of Corinth

A city reborn

Corinth was a new Roman city with an ancient Greek past. It was sacked by the Romans in 146 BC and restored in 44 AD. Major building work was needed to recreate the city. While some features, such as the temples, were restored on their previous sites, the forum and many parts of the centre of the city were remodelled according to plans drawn up in Rome.

There would have been a Roman population alongside the Greek one, but there were also immigrants and migrant workers from all around the Mediterranean, including people from Crete, Syria and Macedonia, and also Egypt and Judea.

For many of these people, this was a go-ahead place, looking forward, not backwards – but perhaps the memory of what had happened lived on in the collective memory of Greek families there. Maybe it gave them a different Greek identity as compared to the intellectual confidence and pride of being an Ephesian, for instance.

Layers of society

While it was a new and prosperous place, we should not run away with the idea that it was a place where anyone could prosper by hard work and that social opportunities were equal. There were still significant social divisions, not only between the very rich and the very poor, but also between those who were born free and those who were born slaves. Although it was possible for a prosperous and able slave to buy their freedom and become a ‘freedman’, there is some evidence that a freedman would still be barred from some civic positions.

The Christian community in Corinth

Paul had a troubled relationship with the church in Corinth. He had planted congregations in the city following his arrival there in 50 AD. Luke, in Acts 18, tells us that Paul stayed 18 months, working in partnership with Priscilla and Aquila who were tent makers like him, and enjoying a fruitful ministry  (Acts 18.1-17).

Having left the city in late 51 or early 52 AD, Paul wrote a letter that is now lost, which contained further advice and teaching for the young believers. In response, they wrote to him asking for clarification of a number of points he’d made. His reply is what we have in our Bibles as 1 Corinthians. And let’s take note that as the congregation were read the letter they would have debated and discussed its contents - not like hearing sermons today where people listen (or daydream) and probably say nothing!

Shortly after sending that letter, Paul made a return visit to Corinth that didn’t go as well as he’d hoped. After he left, he wrote again. This letter, also lost, is known as ‘the painful letter’ and is referred to in 2 Corinthians. It caused a degree of anger among its recipients but also led to a rethink on their part. So when Titus brings news of the church to Paul in Troas, things are looking up.

Paul starts writing the letter we have in our Bibles as 2 Corinthians. However, not all the news Titus brings is good; there are still rival teachers at work in Corinth who are questioning Paul’s credentials and asserting that his gospel is defective because he suffers so much. Clearly the relationship between Paul and this church is not fully restored.

So, Paul’s passionate letters to this church that is trying to find its way amidst competing commitments are a plea for making Christ the centre of their worship and daily life, and to focus on right living in a city where every lifestyle choice was an acceptable option.

It is no surprise then that these letters still speak to us today.

There is nothing new it appears, in people believing that religion and faith are for simpletons and those who are not particularly intelligent!

Corinth in Paul’s day was in some ways not dissimilar to 21^st century Britain. There was prevalent atheism; religion was mocked; philosophy was an amusement, and had become a mere argument about words, an arena for those who liked to argue about the meaning of things for the sake of it.  Today we have fundamentalist atheism and the assumption that science can explain everything important to human life.

The bitterness of the quarrels going on in Corinth drives Paul back to the foundations of faith. The cross is the antithesis of success, the end of ambition, the enemy of human pride. Those enmeshed in quarrels have not understood the power of God, which subverts and turns on its head, the way a so-called vibrant and successful society actually works. Power, status, wealth, all that society regards as markers of success are foolishness in God’s economy.  This wordly ‘wisdom’ is empty and futile from the point of view of the gospel.  In Corinth, as today, so much depended on charm, money and social status, but God works by overturning all such pretension. No one could be impressed by the cross. It is sheer ‘folly’, representing to the so-called ‘wise’ nothing but failure and degradation. But the truth is that the cross reveals both the power and wisdom of God.

Few of the Corinthian church came from privileged backgrounds, or wielded power or influence. Yet God chose them for a purpose: to shame those who rely on such things to manipulate others.  If we too feel we are not entirely part of the social scene around us because of our background, age, ill-health, more modest means or not being part of the ‘in crowd’, then we are in good company, for God’s heart is especially tender towards those who feel left out or on the edge. And anyone who does not promote inclusion and equality in the Church has not really grasped what God has revealed in the cross.  

The cross is an upside down act of love and self-sacrifice, where Jesus surrenders all power by choosing to be put to death by the world’s religious and political power systems.  The seeming foolishness of this is the wisdom of God.  God’s rule and reign comes through means that are completely opposite to society’s measures of success and power.  We encounter God most transformationally when we are weak, helpless and broken; when we turn to God in humility and trust, knowing we need to be continually saved from ourselves and the things prized by our contemporary culture. Then we see the power of God, the power of the cross, at work in our lives.